2 Aug 2012 - success stories

Today was a very successful, but hardworking day.  I had a day off so I spent 5 hours pottering at the allotment in the sunshine - be rude not to!

I mowed some of the lawn, turned over a new bit of plot and planted out some more beans and peas and changed the protection of the cape gooseberries.  I also put in a rose plant to attract bees (and hide a wee gap under the mesh). 

potatoes & raspberries

The newly dug plot gave us a few potatoes, which was a nice surprise - I swear the guy before us planted nothing but potatoes!  Also managed to rescue a few more raspberries (raspberry fool, anyone?) and 4 redcurrants - see if you can spot them..... I guess any redcurrant jam on our shelves will be bought this year!

brocolli & sprouts

There were some other pleasant surprises - in the row of brussel sprouts is a very nice looking brocolli!

flowers on squash

There are also some flowers on the squash plants, although most of them are ornamental gourds, which is something I'm going to have to learn to dry out (or whatever it is I'm supposed to do with them (afterall, you never see one in the shops with a giant hole in it where the seeds have been taken out!)

Apart from that, everything else is coming along nicely, if not a wee bit behind schedule - but we have had a pretty wet summer. 

I've been impressed with the fact that the sweetcorn has grown - something that never grew for us at the old allotment.  It looks like one is definitely going to produce, not sure about the others, but fingers crossed!  We'll be freezing sprouts till the cows come home - that's the best crop we've got so far, and it looks like turnip wine might be on the list of things to try soon!  The garlic is doing well, but it looks like something had a nibble at one - will need to watch for that next year.  The carrots are coming along now as well, we were using up old seeds, so it's going to be a colourful Christmas dinner - there's samurai red, purple, orange and who knows what other carrot seeds we put in!

2 June 2012 - filling in the gaps

 The latest bed that was cleared of weeds, the toilet rolls have got the cauli in, so I don't pull up my last 5 seeds thinking they're weeds! - in this half theres:
chickory, purple cauliflower, green kohl rabi, kale, rainbow spinach and savoy cabbage.

In the other side of that bed is:
purple brussel sprouts, nasturtium, purple sprouting brocolli, pak choi and purple kohl rabi






at the very end of the bed are some old seeds - that may, or may not come up.... sweet pepper bush and a licquorice scented herb plant.... well, may as well give them a chance....

 Then there was filling in the other end of the roots bed, and filling in the gaps where no seedlings have come up.  Because nothing goes to plan (and I wouldn't have it any other way.....) one envelope split, so in my hand is possibly spinach beet, or beetroots of some sort.  I put it at the end and we'll see what we see!

we have some new flowers in the pond ;-)

the raspberries get bird-proofed

 

Have a look at the quick 30 second video - my first attempt at uploading one on here - the resident sheepdog rounding up the chickens! 
Round and round and round she goes - when she stops, nobody knows!

25 June 2012 - new growth

Pumpkin (possibly)

My brother very nicely got me some seeds for Christmas, I had planned to have a whole bed of my favourite pumpkins, but so far, all that's come up is the ornamental gourds!  Well, at least I've got something, but how do I get them to be ornamental?  I'm guessing I've got to get the seeds out, but you never see holes in the ones in posh shops.....Time to learn a new dark art!

ornamental gourds

I lost the label, so the plant in the root-trainer pot is possibly a pumpkin, marrow, melon or courgette!  You can see how well the roots grow in these pots (they split in half for easy access and reuse).

before....with weeds

after

Here's the "leaves" bed - at the front is brussel sprouts, then further back (in toilet rolls) is some cauliflower (plants & seeds), brocolli plants, amaranthus calaloo seeds, cos lettuce seeds and rainbow spinach plants.  Between the rows is leeks.
  

Purple brussel sprout

Turnips & Nasturtium

Corn & Jerusalem Artichokes

Globe Artichokes

We've got some fruit coming through - and plans to start making rhubarb wine!

Gooseberries

Cape Gooseberries

Redcurrants

Raspberries

Rhubarb v boot!

Plums

 

resident

relaxing after some hard work

30 May 2012 - seedling successes

Today was all about a big clear out of a patch of grass that was getting more and more out of control, or so I thought.  It ended up being much more exciting than that!

I planted out 5 spaghetti squash and gave them their own "greenhouse" as an experiment to see if this will work better than growing them on the windowsill and transplanting out, or if it doesn't make any difference either way.

I dug in some horse manure a few weeks ago and turned over a few times, when the seedlings get bigger, I'll put straw round to stop the squash from rotting.

before

Then I set about clearing the grass, it was harder than I thought it would be and found 5 tyres underneath it all!  I did get it finished, but got a little distracted by frogs, butterflies and weeding round seedlings when I got bored!

after

The seedlings were doing really well, we've got a variety of things showing up in all beds. 

brocolli

sprouts

photo 1

photo 1 - from far left:
Jerusalem artichokes
Sweetcorn
Purple haze carrots
Salsify
Nasturtium
Turnip
Scorzonera

photo 2

photo 2 - from far left
Brocolli (close up above)
Cauliflower
Parsley
Nasturtium
Brussel sprouts

Then there were my distractions, chatting to the neighbour with the pond, seemed like a good idea to find frogs!  A butterfly exploriing the strawberries also took my fancy and the creme de la creme was the surprise on the way home, but I'm gunna have to put that on the next blog because I think there are enough photos on the one now!

16 May 2012 - Seeds, seeds, seeds

I took today off work as an "allotment day", I'm guessing non-lotties won't understand how fab that is!

Well I ended up not feeling very well on Tuesday, not much better today, so packed myself off to the allotment with coffee and a packet of Tums and thought I'd do an hour of the easy stuff, go home for a bit and come back for another stint in the afternoon.  Yeah, like that's gunna happen!  Four hours later, I'm heading off home!

I forgot my camera, but here's what I got up to:

*  got 20 rows of seeds sown in trays, covered and put in the greenhouse (10 rows are pumpkin, courgette, marrow, melons.  10 rows are mini sweetcorn and late peas/beans)

* weeded the "fruit" bed and planted a lavender in a space there (a bee came along to investigate, but it was a dim one, it was at the wrong end of the bed!) - bed is just behind the blue tarped bed

* weeded round the "roots" bed, we've got lots of turnips and looks like some salsify is coming up too. - bed is just by the greenhouse

* in the "leaves" bed, dug over the rest of the bed, planted out the rest of the brussel sprouts, put in the leeks between those rows, sowed some UK bluebells, nasturtium, purple sprouting brocolli, cauliflower and celery parsley. - bed is under the green netting

* at the fenceline of the "leaves" bed I dug in a tyre, filled it and planted out some of the carnation sprays.

* watered the new seeds/seedlings in place and the ones in the greenhouse too.

I had my "ears" in and was singing away (using the term loosely) and decided at just the right time to stop and look around.  I'm sure the guy trying to mind his own business wasn't that worried about a bad rendition of Twisted Sister and failing to hit the high notes of The Proclaimers, but I'm really glad I decided not to sing along to The Bloodhound Gang!  I may never have lived that down!